


Storybook Historiography

by synthetica



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, felix’s life long gay crisis, felix’s piscean sense of the dramatic, makeshift flower crowns, rated t for tweenage pining, reading too many fairytales makes you gay when you know a real prince, waxing poetic about knights and princes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22282549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synthetica/pseuds/synthetica
Summary: Felix may not be the storybook picture of a knight, but Dimitri is a prince straight out of a fairytale, and Felix has always been determined to serve and protect him in the ways he knows how.One hot summer day, Fhirdiad, 1174.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	Storybook Historiography

His father used to read him these stories.

It only happened when Felix was young, very young, when he still needed help contextualizing the world and his place in it and before reality could sink its teeth in and bend him in ways beyond what Rodrigue could control. He’d learned his lesson with Glenn, who apparently had an… underdeveloped sense of romantic appreciation for the concept of royalty. For all of his brother’s lessons on etiquette and court manners couldn’t override the primal urge in his child brain to cover the young prince in mud, like he were roughhousing with any other friend and not his future king.

Bringing up the younger Fraldarius two years later, Rodrigue had insisted on a different approach, one that not only imparted the same stringent standards of noble behavior, but also aimed to instill a sense of deeper purpose onto their roles in a way a child could understand.

Come nightfall, long after all of Felix’s lessons on writing and arithmetic and swords and table manners had ended, Rodrigue would scoop him up into his bed and read from fables purchased on his travels. Most came from Kingdom writers, books of torn and out of print fairytales, children’s tales regaling wyverns and victorious wars. His father would even imbue long-dead histories with his trademark voices and ever-captivating cadence. Any book was fair game, as long as it had two characters of note—a royal heir and a noble knight.

Every night he would read, and Felix would curl into his side and listen with rapt attention until he drifted off or duty called his father away. Felix’s toddler ears would be filled with fanciful stories of princes and princesses whose trials and tribulations never stopped their graceful ascent to kings and queens, of the knights and court liaisons and mentors who existed to serve in their path to glory.

To Felix, they were sparkling, dazzling things, pictures he could see so clearly in his mind even if the text contained no illustrations at all, dancing behind his eyelids in a brilliant technicolor the doldrums of his daily studies only seemed to contain in brief flashes. 

“This is you, Felix,” Rodrigue would say upon the knight’s inevitable introduction. Felix would crane to see the pictures when they were present, but they never seemed to resonate. Knights, real knights, like his brother or Gilbert, never wore those ridiculous feathered helmets where you couldn’t see their faces, at least not around Felix. Still, he would nod. “And who is this?”

“Prince Dimitri,” Felix would reply, because the answer was always the same. His father would find the description of the prince and trace a thick finger over the text, slow so Felix could read it all himself. Unlike the knight, whose description was sometimes limited to less than a line and at times lacking even a name, the princes were adorned with lavish descriptions from the depths of their eyes to the jewels upon their collars, the authors spinning prose of sapphires and rubies, of kind, flushed cheeks and steady hands. 

“Right,” Rodrigue would smile, turning the page and holding his place with an index finger. “There will be stories about you two someday, as long as you’re a good knight.”

“I will be,” Felix would retort, defiant to his bones even as a small child. As those stories filled his ears, he believed it—maybe not in the costume or the sycophantic way of following orders or the slaying of great tyrants, but in every way that mattered. Those details weren’t the point, anyway, and though he’d recall the more outrageous ones years later, what stuck with him most was the bare essentials. He may not have felt like a storybook knight, but he understood what real knights were meant to do. 

The second his father put a real sword in his hands, all those images began to coalesce into reality. He would come to wield power, and with that, the responsibility to serve. To protect. Those things never felt like questions, even though the weight in his palms felt heady and new then, all of seven and trembling from anticipation. 

They didn’t sharpen into something he truly recognized as his own, however, until he knelt and felt the blade of that sword come to rest painlessly on his bony shoulder mere moments later. He’d looked up at the glint in Dimitri’s young eyes, smiling as they played at the roles they’d one day assume like boys trying on their father's shoes, and he knew. He knew what he would serve the rest of his life protecting.

Felix noticed other, simpler things out of those tales too, and once he started he knew for the rest of his days he could never stop. Dimitri’s eyes were a shimmering sky blue in the sun, just as the young king’s were in his favorite book of Almyran fairy tales. Like the lost prince from Dagdan folklore, Dimitri’s hands were also slim and soft, yet calloused on the fingertips from hundreds and thousands of hours training with his lance. Just as in the histories written of his father before him, Dimitri’s hair shone bright even in the darkness of night, that brilliant glowing blonde so often giving him away in the games of hide and seek they’d play to break up the long winters. 

Felix couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be Glenn, once he was old enough to understand the difference. Even as his older brother grew past his initial ignorance into a near perfect knight of the Kingdom, Dimitri himself was always his friend before he was his future king. As for Felix, he knew no such thing. Glenn fit so neatly into the crisp, clean edges of classic knighthood that Felix could never quite get past all the ways in which he feared he’d never measure up. Throwing himself at the mercy of the Kingdom as thoughtlessly as real knights like the unflappable, effortless Glenn felt impossible when his own heart hung so heavy in his chest, constantly leaking selfish needs and emotions he could never just learn to hold down. 

Besides, Dimitri was a prince in every way he understood the word to mean, and he was Felix’s long before there was a chance for him to be seen as anything else. 

The stories worked for what they were meant to, in the end. Felix never once had the urge to play rough with Dimitri like he would the other boys. 

In a way, they worked almost too well.

When Felix was eleven, there was a summer hotter and brighter than the rest. Many of the children shared classes all year round, but in the summers the other nobles his age were downright inescapable, even in their leisure. Over time, Felix got used to the presence of the loudmouthed Gautier child and that bookish blonde girl, but something about the sun and slick heat against his skin made him want to run towards the story book of his own and leap into it like the rivers they’d swim in. 

He’d stayed on the shore one day while the rest did just that, hiding away from the sun beneath a tree while the others turned to the cool waters of the river that snaked around the kingdom capital. He’d indulge in it from time to time, but Felix couldn’t stand how he’d shiver or how his clothes would cling to his body after. Ingrid always made cracks that he was more of a girl than she was, always so finicky about his hair and smell of his skin.

He paid it no mind. In early childhood, he would have jumped off a bridge if Dimitri had done it first, but he’d fallen into the role of a conscientious objector natural as breathing. If being the sole voice of reason holding the prince back from coming home covered in dirt made him girlish, so be it. 

The river wasn’t unclean per se, but Felix preferred not having to wash the water out of his eyes every time he wanted to see straight. And there was always something he wanted to look at. 

It would be years before he understood what came over him that day, watching the others strip down to their underclothes and submerge their heads underwater. He’d wonder how he missed the signs, like how his gaze remained glued to Dimitri and how his wet hair fell against his strong back, his blue eyes bright in the sun. 

As Felix’s hands raked against the grass in desperate itch for something to do, he discovered a flower tucked in the riverbed, a brilliant crimson. He found another, and another, and ignoring Glenn’s pleas for him to join, an idea popped into his head. Crawling on hands and knees, he endured the heat until he gathered exactly what he was looking for and returned ten minutes later to the tree trunk armed with a handful of flowers and a bundle of twigs and stems. 

Felix was never the crafty type—he didn’t learn how to work a knot until he was six, and made Glenn tie his tunic for even longer—but he labored over his project with every ounce of attention and finesse in his small body. He tied branches together with shaking fingers, careful not to crush too many of the delicate flowers in between his thumb in the process of placing them along the nubs of wood. 

The final project was less than perfect, hardly something that could be called passable, really. It was more of an oval than a circle, and some of the branch ends poked out untamed like thorns with the flowers atop crooked, uneven stems leaking chlorophyll onto his hands. 

Felix was just about to toss it into the river in frustration when the others emerged and his breath caught in his throat. Dimitri’s white undershirt was soaked and clinging to his skin, and despite the goosebumps across his exposed chest, he laughed as he wrung his hair out into the water. Sylvain put a hand to his shoulder and whispered something in his ear, and something stirred in Felix’s gut, a tight, hot emotion he’d felt a thousand times before but hardly seemed to leave him alone lately.

Slowly, Dimitri turned and his eyes found his, curling at the corners with the force of his smile. He crossed over to him in several graceful steps with those tall adolescent legs of his, too long for his body but perfect evidence of what was to come. 

“You should have joined us,” Dimitri said, water dripping from his pants onto Felix’s leg. He stepped back when he noticed it, but it was foolish of him to think he minded, as far as Felix was concerned. “You must be burning.”

Dimitri gestured down to his tunic and boots, stopping when his eyes fell on the makeshift crown still clutched in Felix’s tiny fists. “What’s this?”

“It’s nothing.” Felix felt his face burn, but it was a different sort of heat, now. It was funny in retrospect how much time he spent frustrated at his lack of vocabulary to describe those feelings back then, considering how desperately he’d come to try and forget those nuances entirely. 

Dimitri held out his hand, and if Felix was at all prepared to fight, it dissipated like mist in the cold night air at the sight of his prince’s open palm. Still, he was slow to offer it up, crossing his arms over his chest the second it was in Dimitri’s hands and turning his face down towards the dirt, away from his wide eyes and expectant stance.

“It’s beautiful,” Dimitri said, and Felix would have snapped at him for lying if he didn’t have the gall to sound so damn sincere. It was a personality mainstay for every prince Felix had read about, but back then, Dimitri seemed almost pathologically allergic to deceit. He couldn’t get a hit on Felix when sparring without crouching over him with a worried crease in his forehead, always humored the servant girls when they asked about their makeup, took every adoring gift with a smile and grace that seemed to spring eternal. “Did you make this?”

Here, too, he was far beyond his years yet childlike to the bone. Against his better judgment, Felix squinted out of the corner of his eye and caught him tracing around the rim of the crown, a softness over his features that ached in his gut. 

“Yeah,” Felix replied, faint to his own ears. He swallowed, and unplanned words tumbled out one after another just like they always did time and time again, no matter how hard he tried to bite them back. “You can have it. I made it for you.”

He didn’t dare look at Dimitri then, transfixed by his own hand digging into the grass, piling dirt beneath his nails he’d have to fuss over cleaning out later. His own breath alone rushed through his ears for long seconds until he heard the faint rustle of branches settling.

“How do I look?” Dimitri asked, somewhere between joking and vulnerable. It snapped Felix up to attention before he could fight it, and he caught Dimitri lopsided and pink-cheeked in the shade of the leaves above. The red of the flowers flushed the pale pallor of his skin, and while he was always meant for sapphire, the color brought out a different hue to him, one that stopped Felix’s heart in his throat and laid pressure against his chest.

“Like a prince,” Felix said, after wrapping his lips around several words he knew he couldn’t say out loud even before they’d fully formed.

Dimitri nodded, perfunctory, and ambled over to the river where the other three were still gathered, hitting each other with their drying cloths and lazily working on putting their clothes back on. They hardly paid Dimitri any mind as he peered into the water, catching his reflection in the light. When he turned around, he smiled, white teeth shining, and Felix couldn’t help the corners of his own lips from curling up.

“I love it,” Dimitri decided as he crossed back over, adjusting the fit on his head. 

“You don’t have to pretend.” Felix squirmed against the tree, because even though he was the one who said it, the inadequacy from before returned in full, wrapping him up in its shadow. His prince deserved something better than what his unskilled hands had done, it was beneath him, he should have looked more royal than what he could give him, he… 

“Can I really keep it?” Dimitri asked again, and there was a hint of wonder there, one that whirred Felix’s thoughts to a halt on command. Dimitri had these words about him, he always did, ones he could imbue with the kind of awe that only someone born to move armies and towns and seas could conjure. It made everything feel new and fresh, like magic was just around the corner. Felix wanted to cover himself up in it like a blanket, but even if he could, he’d spare it for Dimitri’s lightly shivering frame. 

Instead of trusting himself to speak, Felix just nodded, and Dimitri beamed. He offered up his hand again, and it was cool to the touch as he hauled Felix to his feet. 

“Here,” Felix huffed at the first accidental brush of Dimitri’s clammy chest against his arm, undoing the clasp of his cape to peel it from his back. Ignoring a soft noise of protest, he wrapped it around Dimitri’s shoulders, suddenly so small despite his prince’s broader frame. He held onto his crown as he ducked beneath it, a weary fondness in his eyes that Felix couldn’t dare describe at the time but made him feel unsteady on his feet all the same. “Dry off, you’ll get sick.”

“Always a worrier,” Dimitri smiled, thin lipped and words distant, like another neutral observation for his notes. Felix didn’t mind—He knew this about himself, knew it would take more than the Goddess herself to change it. Dimitri knew it too, and it brought a tug of familiarity, pleasant and warm like it was their own little joke. “It’s too hot for that, Felix.”

“Still,” Felix frowned, tugging the fabric tighter around his frame. They were the same height, more or less, but they wouldn’t be for long. Dimitri was lanky, underdeveloped and terminally thin despite the muscle, but Felix’s own body had changed enough to know Dimitri had just begun. Besides, he’d watched Glenn grow. They had a similar build, those two, lean and strong and broad through the shoulders with angular, narrow hips. 

His hands stilled across Dimitri’s shoulder blades, and for a second, he slipped and fell into imagining what he’d feel like once they were knotted with the chiseled strength of a teen, and then an adult. He shuddered a sigh against him, working the fabric down to his waist until he felt Dimitri’s eyes on the top of his head and shame finally, belatedly, got the better of him. He slid the cape away and back into his own hands, chastened. 

“Felix…” Dimitri began, wrapping his hands with ghostlike touch around Felix’s elbows. He jumped at the contact, shifting his gaze up and skipping his eyes to rest upon the flowers in his hair. 

“We changed our minds,” Glenn’s voice floated up from the shore, snapping Felix out from the dizzying churn of his chest with a jolt. He peered over Dimitri’s shoulder to see three future knights undressed back down to their undershirts, water up to their knees and beckoning Dimitri over with waving arms. “We’re going back in, come on!”

Reluctantly, Felix tried to shake himself from Dimitri’s hold, too accustomed to this battle to fight it. By then, Felix knew enough to know he wanted too much, had already fought through the selfish anger and disappointment that he would never be able to get as much of Dimitri’s time and attention as he wanted. He wanted all of it, and that was impossible, of course. He had to learn how to pick his battles, how to live with less. It was still a struggle. He wondered if he’d ever learn to share without that hollow pit in his chest or if it would always be there, a constant companion in ways the future king could never be.

To his surprise, Dimitri strengthened his hold, digging firmly but painlessly into the flesh of his arm. “You’re sure you won’t join?”

Felix swallowed down the part of him that wasn’t, shrugged and said, “I was thinking of getting some tea.”

“That sounds nice,” Dimitri said, and Felix swore he’d never understand how he always made it sound so true. He squeezed down on his arms just once before letting him go, and Felix’s skin stung everywhere he’d touched, tingling with energy. He tried to shake it off, crossing his arms as Dimitri turned around to address the group behind him. “No thank you, Felix and I are headed to the gardens.”

Ignoring their various protests of disappointment, Dimitri turned, and Felix was hapless to do anything but follow, just like he always was. Still, his body flushed with the unexpected victory, the mere prospect of more time with him, let alone time away from their peers whose eyes Felix was beginning to inexplicably fear, leaving him all but weightless atop the grass. 

When Dimitri gently took the cape from Felix’s hands and draped it around his shoulders, the feel of his steady hands at the nape of his neck sparked something else, too. It was something he’d felt without knowing it long before, and a concept that would take him years upon years to fully unpack, but he started to see it then, red flowers in his prince’s hair and his hands on his back.

He may have been born to be a knight for a king, but Felix felt his duty to Dimitri strongest like this—alone and private, occupying a space that others wouldn’t ever think to tread.

It was a dangerous game to play, but Felix keened into Dimitri’s hands anyway. Looking up at the rays of sun filtering through the twisted branches and his soft strands of hair, he knew he’d never be able to pretend he wanted anything else again.

His sense of the romantic, he’d later go onto decide, had been woefully overdeveloped.

**Author's Note:**

> [Real life visual of how this pairing makes me feel.](https://twitter.com/sovietminds/status/1216930353182662656?s=21)
> 
> To everyone waiting on the next chapter of [Until I Am Whole](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20659244/chapters/49061750), it is coming, but it will be a week or two late! I’ve been on vacation and wanted to stretch my muscles with something different. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, consider giving it a [retweet](https://twitter.com/sovietminds/status/1217904092611301378?s=21).


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